“Thick and creamy, wholesome and health-promoting, yogurt nourishes us from daybreak to bedtime,” Janet Fletcher writes in the introduction to her cookbook, Yogurt: Sweet and Savory Recipes for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.

At one hundred pages and fifty-two pages, this hardbound targets those interested in food recipes made with various types of yogurt. With full-page, full-color photographs that cover about two-thirds of the completed dishes, there are fifty recipes.

After an introduction of the history, science, and choices of yogurt, the book is divided into eight chapters, each with a listing of corresponding recipes. The ending has a bibliography, resources, author’s biography, acknowledgments, and index.

Beginning the first chapter on how to make yogurt at home, the choices of making drained and Greek yogurt as well as yogurt cheese and using whey are explained. The following chapters include seven breakfast recipes, ten appetizers and salads, seven soups and meats, eleven vegetable and grain concoctions, a dozen desserts, and five beverages.

Each recipe starts with a title and serving size, listing ingredients in order of use. One to several paragraphs give a description or where the recipe originated. Also in paragraph form are the instructions with the writer’s personal tips or suggestions. No preparation time or caloric content is included.

Some of the unusual dishes range from yogurt with eggs, radish tzatziki, chilled golden beet and yogurt soup, lamb souvlaki with skillet flatbread, spinach with brown butter, yogurt and dukka, poached quinces with yogurt and pistachios, and fresh pineapple lassi.

With her recipes often requiring drained plain yogurt, the author is not a fan of non-fat yogurt as it is too tart. Sometimes promoting using whole milk for extra richness, she gives five steps of making yogurt that involves choosing a starter and incubation method.

Although some of the photographs do not depict the finished dish but ingredients, the collection of information and recipes that include something as basic as yogurt are satisfying and sound flavorful. With traditions from Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syrian, Iran, India, and other countries, the food dishes offer a myriad of different ethnic tastes that use yogurt.

Author and co-author of over two dozen books on food and beverages, Fletcher has won several journalism awards. Living in California, she travels nationwide teaching cooking and cheese appreciation classes. No biographical information is given on photographer Kolenko.

Thanks to Blogging for Books for furnishing this complimentary book in exchange for a review of the reader’s honest opinion.

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